by Dan Rix
Amy made a sour face and drained her glass in a single gulp. Then she slammed it down on her dad’s desk and brushed past me into the hallway.
Damian had used a word . . .
Expired.
So I was more valuable to Charles than he first let on. Indispensable, in fact. He needed me to replace Amy. Last week, when he almost retracted my job offer, had all been an act. Reverse psychology. And I fell for it.
Charles needed me . . . bad.
Damian leaned against the window, swishing around his champagne and watching the bubbles dissolve out of the liquid. He didn’t meet my eye, nor did I particularly want him to.
Through the window, the rusty tint coloring the horizon caught my eye. The lights of San Diego, reminding me again that I wanted to be home. In my bed.
Forgetting all of this.
I set my glass down untouched. “I should get home.”
“Blaire, stay a little,” said Charles, making a pouty face. Though I hadn’t touched my champagne he topped me off, this time to the brim, spilling champagne onto his desk. “You’re off the clock. Enjoy yourself.”
“Kind of hard right now,” I said. “After that.”
Charles ignored the comment and rubbed his hands together. “We have to choose a nickname for you.”
“A nickname? Please don’t.”
He refilled his own glass with a grin. “Damian’s the Yellowjacket. Amy is—or was—”
Amy poked her head into the office, stopping him short. “Dad, can I talk to you?”
“Aren’t you going to celebrate with us, Amy-baby?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“I’m listening.”
“In private.” Her eyes flashed to me.
Charles sighed and took a final sip of his drink before following her out. Which left me and Damian.
Our eyes flashed together, then split apart. Silence followed. Damian carried his glass to the desk and carefully poured the champagne back into the bottle. He did the same with mine.
“It’ll make him feel better,” he said. “Go home.”
I slipped out the door and practically sprinted down the hall. I didn’t have a problem staying out late; there was no one at home to care, but right now, I really wanted to be home. In bed, wrapped in my comforter. I wanted to wake up tomorrow and have this all be a bad dream.
Amy’s voice carried from downstairs. I was about to descend the staircase and interrupt their conversation, when something about her tone made me pause just out of view. I listened in, my heart pounding.
They were talking about me.
***
“. . . simply out of the question,” said Charles. “Your body’s too fragile. We have Blaire now.”
I hung close to the top stair, so I could hear them without being seen.
“Daddy, she’s reckless,” said Amy. “She could have gotten Damian killed. She didn’t follow the briefing and he had to take on the guards by himself. It’s just one crossover—”
“Amy, you’re expired. End of discussion.”
She glared at him. “I know my own body.”
“I don’t think you do,” he said. “You were already showing symptoms on your last mission. You might not even make it through one crossover.”
“But Damian and I trained together,” she said. “We know each other’s styles—”
“I’m going to phase out Damian, too. Even if his body doesn’t show it, I know it’s breaking him down. But that doesn’t matter. With all the security records they got tonight, we’ll be able to make Blaire a false identity and send her alone next time.”
“Wow, she has you wrapped around her little finger, doesn’t she? What did she do? Wink at you?”
“This is for your own safety,” he growled. “Crossover sickness comes on suddenly. You know that.”
I shifted, and my knee cracked. They both glanced up. Realizing my cover was blown, I emerged at the bottom of the stairs. On my way to the door, Amy watched me like a hawk.
“I don’t even know why you trust her,” she muttered under her breath, just loud enough so I could hear.
***
My alarm didn’t go off the next morning, and I woke up feeling totally shaken at nine. I groaned, realizing I would completely miss first period even if I left right now.
Why hadn’t my alarm gone off? I reached for my cell phone, which I had dropped on my bedside table the night before. It was off, probably out of batteries.
I plugged it in and collapsed back in bed, and all at once the previous evening invaded my mind in a grotesque rush. I massaged my temples and cradled my head.
Crossover.
Even if I quit the internship, I couldn’t forget what I’d witnessed. What was possible.
From my back, I powered up my cell phone and watched it light up. A white screen appeared for a second, then the phone shut off. I tried it a second time.
The screen flashed white and displayed a single line of red text.
I blinked once, and something prickly dripped down inside me and pooled under my skin.
The text was backwards.
I kicked off the covers and jerked upright, my heart making dull thuds against my sternum. It could only mean one thing.
I was still in a reflection.
I scanned my bedroom for any indication, breath shallow. Last night, we crossed over in room B. We returned through room B. After the champagne, I had driven home, gone right to bed. Where was the glitch?
Why was I still in a reflection?
The familiar layout of my room washed over me. I summoned every detail from the night before, the red tape, the blue tape . . . everything should have flipped back to normal. What had I missed?
Come to think of it, my room wasn’t flipped. Just my phone.
Ah. Now I remembered. The night before, when Damian told me to empty my pockets. I must have accidentally brought the reflection of my phone back to the source.
My real cell phone, which I must have left at the office, probably still functioned normally. I blew out a sigh of relief and let the pillow swallow my head.
But why didn’t this one function normally? If everything was just a mirror image, the circuits should still function the same. Shouldn’t it at least turn on?
It was just like Damian had said. Crossing over damaged electronics
God knows what it did to humans.
***
AP Biology, my last class before lunch, passed like a fog. When the bell finally rang, I flinched and kneed the underside of the desk, drawing stares. I teetered to my feet and rushed the exit. Outside the hazy sky blinded me, forcing me to shield my eyes.
Voices followed me down the hall, distant and muted. Nothing felt real.
I could walk through mirrors.
“Blaire!” someone called, a voice I recognized. Halfway across the quad, I turned to see Josh Hutchinson jogging to catch up with me. “Do you have a second?” he said, out of breath.
“Not really—”
“Good. Wait right here.” He squeezed my shoulders as if to press me into the grass, winked, and ran around a corner. I folded my arms and waited. Okay, Josh.
Students filtered into the quad. A couple of freshman wheeled out two large amplifiers, trailing orange power cables, and aimed them at me. I snapped out of my daze—and only then noticed that students weren’t coming out to lunch. They were stopping at the edge of the grass, forming a large circle around me. I caught sight of my friends, who waved at me, grinning.
I must have missed an announcement this morning about a rally. I was about to flee when a third freshman ran into the circle carrying a large cardboard sign. He tripped and did a faceplant into the grass, and the whole school erupted in l
aughter. He jumped to his feet and raised the sign to cover his beet-red face. I read the sign and felt my face turn the same color.
Don’t Move, Blaire
Uh-oh.
The sound of flutes and a gentle drumroll drifted into the quad, and the crowd split. The marching band filed into the quad in full uniform and gathered in two clusters, also facing me.
At last, Josh stepped into the circle holding a microphone, and the school cheered. He had thrown on a black blazer and wet his hair—and he looked good.
He brushed a curl off his forehead, pressed his lips together, and gave me a final steamy look before he started singing. I recognized the song instantly.
Major uh-oh.
Josh was serenading me with I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing by Aerosmith.
My favorite song since I lost my father.
My hand shot up to my mouth.
The sound of his voice brought moisture to my eyes. I stared at him, spellbound, his words floating inside me like helium. He squeezed his eyes shut, his face tortured with emotion, and shouted the lines into the microphone, his voice perfect.
After the song, another freshman ran into the circle with a bouquet of white roses, and Josh presented them to me.
“Blaire,” he said, “will you go to prom with me?”
“Tell me you’re sorry,” I whispered, my fingers still covering my mouth, “for what you said yesterday.”
He dropped to one knee and held my gaze. “I’m sorry.”
And I could tell he meant it.
“Well?” he said, eyebrows raised.
“What do you think, you dufus?” I pulled him to his feet and kissed him, and around us the school broke into awws and cheers.
I kissed him, to see if it felt real.
***
For the rest of the day, my insides bubbled like the champagne Charles had given us the night before.
Josh Hutchinson.
I could fall in love with him. He knew how to hit the reset button on my life. He knew how to give me butterflies and make me blush like a high school junior was supposed to.
I skipped ISDI and took the day off, feeling giddy for the first time in weeks.
Chapter 11
But even Josh asking me to prom couldn’t distract me from a question that had been tugging at my mind . . . something Charles and Damian had mentioned while explaining crossover. With all the excitement, I had almost forgotten.
Almost. But not quite.
Now, in the first quiet moment since the crossover, what they had said yesterday crept into my mind: the man who showed up two weeks ago was not my real father; he was a reflection.
Like the soldiers Damian had killed.
Just a reflection. But according to Damian, my father—my real father, or source, as they called it—had been orphaned. He crossed over and the mirror broke while he was still inside, cutting him out of existence.
So where had his reflection come from? A reflection of what? If my dad had vanished, wouldn’t his reflections vanish too?
There was something else Damian had said:
After you break symmetry the reflection starts to diverge from the source.
In other words, my father—the one who showed up two weeks ago—had wandered up from a reflection that had diverged from the source. A reflection that had diverged a long time ago. More than eleven months ago, in fact—
No, even longer than that. His story about how I had gone missing at age four—I’d attributed it to memory loss. It wasn’t memory loss. Where he was from, I had gone missing.
He was from a reflection that had diverged more than twelve years ago.
***
I arrived at work on Wednesday to find Damian and Charles at each other’s throats, still shaken by my realization.
“How the hell was I supposed to know he overlapped?” said Damian, through gritted teeth. “It’s not my fault.”
“Not your fault?” said Charles in disbelief. “Spare me, Damian, I know how you work. What in the world did you do to him, anyway?”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
They ignored me.
“I did my mission like I was supposed to,” spat Damian, eyes locked on Charles. “You would have been proud of me.”
“I doubt that very much.”
“He didn’t know jack about Aneuploidy-47. I told you, it’s not my fault he killed himself.”
“There’s always a risk,” said Charles. “You know that. That’s why we don’t kill a reflection when we don’t have to. Everything we do has the potential to psychologically affect their source.”
“Charles, it’s not my fault.”
“Then whose is it?”
“Guys, what’s going on?” I said again, this time louder.
“This is what’s going on, Blaire.” Charles grabbed a remote and switched on an old tube TV squatting atop a filing cabinet.
Onscreen, the channel 8 CBS news streamed live air footage of a convoy of Humvees and camouflaged trucks driving along a freeway.
“. . . is expected to double the concentration of armed forces within the perimeter,” said the news anchor. “Peter, what’s your status in the air?”
The convoy exited the freeway—which I now recognized as the Interstate 5—and continued down a broad city street. A hissing voice came on air, laced with static: the pilot of the news helicopter.
“The military vehicles have left the freeway and are continuing west toward the Institute on Genesee Avenue—” A hiss of static cut off his voice, which came back on a moment later. “Channel eight, I am now being escorted out of the airspace by two helicopter gunships. It appears the U.S. Army is taking this drill very seriously.”
The cameraman zoomed in on the convoy in the distance, now driving single file through the south security checkpoint into the quarantine zone. A repeating announcement scrolled along the bottom of the screen.
Suicide of Scripps director prompts armed forces to double protection within quarantine zone.
***
“More protection?” My gaze flicked to Damian, then to Charles. My first crossover . . . the quarantine zone. “I think it’s about time you guys told me why you want to get inside so badly.”
“Because that’s where they’re keeping it,” said Charles. “You saw the plans, right?”
“The artifact chamber? But I thought you guys built that.”
“We didn’t build it. We’re trying to break into it,” said Charles.
“To steal an artifact?”
“A couple months ago they found something in the ground,” he said, “and they brought it here for research . . . to Scripps.”
“But Scripps does biomedical research.”
“Exactly. And genetics.”
“What about the stuff underground?” I said. “That’s new, right?”
“The particle accelerators and all that equipment?” said Charles. “Built specifically for the artifact. You’d think they were setting up a quantum physics lab, right?”
I peered sideways at him, eyes narrowed. “Yeah?”
“There’s a dozen other labs they could have chosen throughout the country for that kind of research, much better suited, too. Instead, they built an underground lab less than twenty miles from the largest U.S. Navy base on the west coast under the cover of a military exercise. Sound strange to you?”
“A bit.”
“What kind of research requires a quantum physics laboratory, genetics laboratories, and the protection of the entire Pacific Fleet?
“Uh . . . something really dangerous,” I offered.
“Really dangerous,” said Charles. “We think they’ve discovered the forty-seventh chromosome. We think they’re
sequencing it.”
“And you want to stop them?”
“We want to know where they got it.”
***
Throughout the day, I returned again and again to the Immunology building’s blueprints, specifically the underground chamber. Though nothing so much as hinted at the nature of the artifact it contained, I did spot one thing: a maintenance tunnel which branched off and connected with the beach half a mile away. I was just peering closer—noticing it wasn’t nearly as fortified as the rest of the entrances—when Amy slammed a backpack onto my desk.
“New assignment,” she said.
“Organize your own crap,” I muttered.
She raised her eyebrows. “You don’t recognize this?”
I noted the bag’s olive green polyester, briefly wondering if she had stolen one of my own. “Nope. I definitely don’t own anything that tacky.”
“Did you do anything on your first mission?” She gave an exasperated sigh. “While you were tagging along and being a pest, Damian was actually doing work and gathering security records.”
“I’m sure you could have done the mission better, Amy,” I said sweetly. “How come they didn’t send you?” Wow, Blaire. Low blow.
Her lips thinned. “My dad’s scheduled your next crossover for Tuesday. He wants you to bring back a sample of that DNA. And Blaire, I suggest you start prepping. This time, you’re going solo.”
***
The phone call came at dawn, Thursday morning, when only a blue-orange tinge colored the Eastern horizon. My home phone.
I dragged myself to the kitchen to answer. “Hello?”
“Blaire, I tried your cell phone,” Charles said, his voice frantic. “It rang on my desk.”
“Oops. Forgot to pick it up.”
“Never mind that now. I need you down at the office.”
“Now?”
“No, ten minutes ago. Get your ass down here . . . it’s Damian.”
